I’m not unhappy. Of course not; I can find something cheery to say about whatever my readership in a given month was like. But for a month in which I spent nearly two weeks away from my normal Internet routines of visiting blog friends and belatedly answering comments and the like it wasn’t bad at all.
Readership Numbers:
So there were 1,057 page views in July. That’s down from June’s 1,099, but only a touch, and it’s up from May’s 981. And it’s above a thousand which makes me feel secure about being at least tolerated in these parts. The number of unique visitors was down to 585 from June’s 598 and May’s 627. But the June-to-July drop I can’t imagine is significant.
The number of likes rose to 177, from June’s 155 and May’s 133. I can’t hide it: I’m hoping for 199 in August and I don’t know where it’ll go from there. Comments were down a touch to 33, from June’s 39. But some of that is my failing to respond to other people because I was away. My own comments should count, shouldn’t they?
I am considering making one of those big changes and switching away from the theme — “P2 Classic” — that I have. I like its look, especially that it lets comments appear on the front page around here. But I’ve realized that the theme is a disaster on mobile devices. I don’t want to be needlessly difficult.
Also while it’s got a nice friendly “Whatcha up to?” panel up top for me, to quickly add a post, I have never used it except when I wanted to search for something and the cursor was in the wrong field. If someone knows of an updated P2 Classic that you can read on a hand phone please let me know. I’d be glad for it.
Popular Posts:
To posts! The most popular stuff around here in July was a fair split between Reading the Comics posts and Theorem Thursday posts, plus a note that something I started back in May would too be returning. I hope to get to that soon again, maybe this week. That’s also comforting. They’re the things I put the most effort into and I’m glad people like them and don’t find much terribly wrong about them. The top five articles in July according to WordPress were:
- Theorem Thursday: The Jordan Curve Theorem (Writing this was one of the most fun essays I’ve done around here. I’m really happy it’s popular.)
- Reading the Comics, June 29, 2016: Math Is Just This Hard Stuff, Right? Edition (I feel like that’s my Edition title half the time for this stuff.)
- Theorem Thursday: The Five-Color Map Theorem (This is the one with all the 17th century New England jokes in it.)
- Reading the Comics, July 8, 2016: Filling Out The Week Edition (This one has the slightly mysterious and/or controversial Vent Diagram cartoon.)
- Why Stuff Can Orbit: Why It’s Waiting (Theorem Thursday got in the way, plus some stuff about Kant.)
Listing Countries:
What countries like me? … You know what? Bullet lists are so reportedly popular I’ll just try listing everybody and we’ll see what that does for drumming up interest. Readership by country, per WordPress’s data, were:
| Country | Readers |
|---|---|
| United States | 616 |
| Canada | 57 |
| India | 52 |
| United Kingdom | 36 |
| Philippines | 30 |
| Australia | 27 |
| Germany | 26 |
| Slovenia | 22 |
| Singapore | 20 |
| Austria | 15 |
| Brazil | 15 |
| Spain | 13 |
| Thailand | 11 |
| Pakistan | 10 |
| Puerto Rico | 7 |
| Indonesia | 6 |
| Ireland | 6 |
| Italy | 6 |
| Croatia | 5 |
| France | 5 |
| Hong Kong SAR China | 5 |
| New Zealand | 5 |
| Sweden | 5 |
| China | 4 |
| Mexico | 4 |
| South Korea | 4 |
| Finland | 3 |
| Greece | 3 |
| Portugal | 3 |
| Russia | 3 |
| Venezuela | 3 |
| Argentina | 2 |
| Czech Republic | 2 |
| European Union | 2 |
| Jordan | 2 |
| Netherlands | 2 |
| Norway | 2 |
| South Africa | 2 |
| United Arab Emirates | 2 |
| Belgium | 1 |
| Chile | 1 |
| Denmark | 1 |
| Dominican Republic | 1 |
| Ecuador | 1 |
| Latvia | 1 |
| Lithuania | 1 |
| Malaysia | 1 |
| Oman | 1 |
| Saudi Arabia | 1 |
| Serbia | 1 |
| Tunisia | 1 |
| Turkey | 1 |
| Ukraine | 1 (*) |
Ukraine is the only country to have been a single-reader country in June too. This is the nearest clean sweep I’ve noticed. The European Union reader, after seven months being alone, found a friend too. I hope they get along.
Search Term Non-Poetry:
Whew. It’s back.
- origin is the gateway to your entire gaming universe.
- what is the average number of grooves on one side of an lp record (if “1” doesn’t satisfy you)
- arithmetic sequences and series joke 48 (the punch line I’d heard was “why did they laugh so much at 15,268?” “Well, you see, we’d never heard that one before!”)
- example of convergent boundaries komiks stris (honestly now tempted to commission a comic strip artist just to do something about convergent boundaries.)
- comics about arithmetic sequence / arithmetic sequence comics (probably I should also commission one about sequences)
Counting Readers:
If I have this right August started with the blog having had 39,394 page views — curse that leap second! — and 16,083 unique viewers. (Because the leap second would give time for one more page view, keeping me from 39,393. If there were a leap second, and if it were at the end of July instead of the end of June. Trust me, if you share a long sequence of assumptions with me then it’s funny.)
WordPress reports me as starting with 610 WordPress.com followers, which feels way up from the start of July’s 597. If you want to join me as a WordPress.com follower there ought to be a button in the upper-right corner, a bit below and to the right of my blog name and above the “Or Follow By Way Of RSS” tag. There’s also a Follow Blog Via Email option and don’t think it doesn’t bother me there’s no dash in E-mail there. More reasons to change the theme I suppose.
I’d wondered last month about WordPress reporting the most popular dates and times around here. So that’s why I moved my default posting time from 11 am Eastern to 2 pm Eastern. But just as in July the most popular day is Sunday (22 percent of page views). Comics posts I suppose. The most popular hour remains 3:00 pm (9 percent of page views). It kind of suggests the time of posting doesn’t matter to people. We’ll see, as I start trying 6 am or if I try something really wild like eleventy-q pm.
See you, I expect, tomorrow with comic strips.
nebusresearch 
Congrats for your increase in views! Math bloggers have a tougher time getting views than say, food bloggers. My most popular posts ironically have the least mathematical content..
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Thank you. Yeah, mathematics has a tougher time getting readers. Not enough pictures, at least when you get away from strange topological constructs. This is surely why Baking And Math is doing well, or ought to be.
There’s really no guessing what’s going to be popular. It usually turns out to be a trifle, and something with a slight but humiliating-to-yourself error in it.
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Yep! Owning educational sites and getting views/getting unique visitors of minimum 250/day is tough tie! My highest count of unique visitors was 189.
Hoping for the best :) Let’s grow together :) All the best.. keep posting!
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Oh, I don’t even know what my highest visitor count on a day was. It would have been in November of last year, though, when I got a lot of spillover curiosity from visitors to my humor blog, which was covering the bizarre collapse of the comic strip Apartment 3-G. And, well thank you, and I hope you enjoy good posting and good reading too.
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